An introduction:

Let’s be honest, you clicked on this because of the title, and I am not here to disappoint.

As a child, I was gross, weird, and firmly believed that inanimate objects had feelings. As a result of this belief, I started collecting Band-Aids not to use but to keep (if I used them I would have to throw them away and that would hurt their feelings). When I was 4, I got a ‘boo-boo’ and was forced to use one of my precious collectibles. I was more upset about using the Band-Aid than I was about being injured so my sister came up with the idea of keeping a Band-Aid Journal.

The purpose of the journal was to preserve the Band-Aids that I had hoarded for so long and document my travels through stories of bloody mishaps. I continued to make entries in the journal for a few years but as I got older, and got hurt less, I stopped documenting my injuries.

Why bring it back?

I decided to start making journal entries again for two reasons:

1) My Band-Aid collection is actually super cool and dates back to the early 1990s

2) Adults don’t get hurt that often and when they do, there’s usually a good story behind it

OG Entries:

These are the highest quality journal entries from my childhood. As you can probably tell, my mom was my ghostwriter from 2003 to 2004 because I didn’t know how to write or spell. I took over in 2005 because I learned how to write but unfortunately still couldn’t spell.

A classic college tale

10.13.2018

Am I writing this in 2022 because I’m a lazy piece of shit who finally got her life in a good place? Yes. Do I still remember this event like it was yesterday? Yes. Because it was super embarrassing.

Picture this: It’s 2018. Crop tops and distressed mom jeans are in, Cardi B’s I Like It is blasting in every bar in existence and Lime Bikes are every zillenial’s main method of transportation. It was my senior year of college at UT and more importantly, it was game day.

Football was HUGE this year. We were finally not sucking for the first time in a long time so tickets to games were A) hard to get and B) expensive. As someone who really only enjoys the social/drinking aspect of football, this was great for me because it meant that none of my friends were going to shell out for tickets and would instead join me at a bar to down some Texas Teas. Around 2 p.m., and about 3 drinks in, one of my friends had the absolutely awful idea to take Lime bikes to a bar downtown. All hopped up on liquid courage, the rest of us thought this was a great plan. We located the nearest flock of electric scooters and were on our way.

This is where shit hit the fan. Or in my case, the curb.

After electric scooters became popular, many states imposed speed restrictions on them in an effort to keep idiots like me safe. But not Texas 🤠. In Texas, you could blast up to 20 mph on one of those bad boys. And that’s exactly how fast I was going. Racing to get downtown before the post-game crowd flooded the bars, I thought it would be funny to sneak up and pass one of my friends. They didn’t see me, I got caught between the curb and their scooter, and I flew. I remember thinking “protect the head,” and I turned to the side so I would roll instead of just smashing into the asphalt. I wish I could say I nailed this maneuver and that this actually looked really cool, but it didn’t. Imagine a drunk 21-year-old soaring off an electric scooter, hitting the pavement, and her belongings explode out of her purse, including a plant (what?). Nothing about that is cool. Teary-eyed and extremely embarrassed, I picked up my plant and other personal effects, insisted I was fine and we carried on.

While we continued our scoot-sesh, I realized I was not fine. My hands were bleeding and because I was rocking Jesus sandals when I tucked and rolled, my toes were fucked too. We reached our destination and I informed the group that I needed to take an Uber home. No one offered to go with me and if you can’t tell, I’m still annoyed about that to this day. In pain and pissed at my friends (even though none of this was their fault), I got in my Uber and thought about how all I wanted to do was have a good cry and eat some fried chicken. I got to my duplex, limped through the door, and to my horror realized that my roommates were having a watch party. Now a party would be super fun if I was just drunk and not busted up from the Lime Bike situation, but I was already on the edge of bursting into tears and now it felt like everyone was looking at me. Someone that I vaguely remember disliking asked me if I was okay and that was my breaking point. I let the tears and snot pour down my face as a told them about my wipeout and desperate need for chicken. One of my roommates stepped up, took me into the bathroom, bathed me (I’m drunk, remember?), cleaned my bloody appendages, and drove me to get chicken nuggies.

The moral of the story? Don’t drunkenly race your friends on electric scooters. And in general just don’t ride one when you’re under the influence. I wish I could say I learned my lesson and never scooted drunk again but I was 21 and as they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

The saw incident

11.07.2021

In this story, I call my dad an asshole. It’s important to know that he is not actually an asshole. He’s a very caring, loving, and all-around great human. But on this day, he was an idiot asshole.

My dad has a habit of accidentally hurting his kids. When I was 7, he dropped a crowbar off the roof and it landed on my head where it left a permanent dent. When I was 8, he collided with my sister when bicycling and broke both her arms. Fast forward 16 years, and that’s when this story takes place. In 2021, I bought a house that was in major need of some TLC. Together my dad and I tore down walls, sledgehammered tile, painted rooms, removed trees, and took on countless other tasks. Besides getting a few little zings when doing our own electrical work, we had remained relatively accident-free during all of our DIY fixer-upper projects. Until November 7th.

I had a lot of dead trees on the property and instead of paying thousands of dollars to have a professional remove them, I bought a $200 chainsaw, countless beers and enlisted my dad’s help. We cut down 8 trees with no incidents so by the time we got to the last one we were way too confident in our arborist abilities. This particular tree was growing at a 90-degree angle so we figured all we had to do was prune some branches, climb a ladder with a chainsaw, make one cut and the tree would drop straight down. Easy right? My dad threw a strap over some branches, told me to pull on them to stop the tree from shaking while he cut, and grabbed his pruning saw. If you’ve never seen a pruning saw, it looks like something the Grim Reaper would carry. It’s basically a saw on a stick and it’s terrifying. To paint a perfect picture of the scene, because this is important, the tree is directly over me, I’m practically dangling from these straps, my dad is wielding the Grim Reaper’s scythe.

So, I’m standing under the tree and I point out that when we cut the branches there’s a very real possibility that they’re going to fall on me. My dad’s response to this concern? “You’ll be fine. They shouldn’t hit you and if they do, just move out of the way.” You would think that as a 24-year-old adult woman I would be capable of calling out my own father when he’s wrong. But I shrugged, figured he knows best, and stayed where I was. This is where the asshole bit comes in. He was sawing, I was pulling, and then CRACK. The branches broke. I was ready to haul ass but something started to hit my head. I raised my hand to cover my face and felt a sharp pain tear across my body. I assumed that part of the tree had fallen on me but when I opened my eyes, there were no branches anywhere near me. Confused, I turned to my dad. He was staring at me, jaw dropped, eyes bugging out in horror. I looked down at my shoulder and that’s when I realized that asshole dropped his saw and it was IN MY ARM.

Now that last sentence made it sound like my dad almost amputated me. It wasn’t that bad. My hand was bleeding, my shoulder was obviously bleeding, but nothing was hospital-level bad just I-will-hold-this-over-your-head-for-years-level bad. The first thing out of my dad’s mouth: “Don’t tell your mom.”

Ultimately, I was fine. Bruised and bloody, but fine. My dad says that I make a bigger deal out of it than necessary, but he’s not the one with the saw scars on his arm.